Where Economics & Personal Finance Intersect

Two of the very best bloggers in the personal finance sphere recently pontificated on the Government's role in encouraging (ahem, forcing) savings. Nelson of Financial Uproar, writing at the end of 2013, and SaveSpendSplurge née Mochimac of Save Spend Splurge recently covered the idea of a massive mandated-by-Government savings rate, along the … [Read more...]

We became aware of a particularly interesting Government policy about 2 weeks ago (along with the rest of America) when the Washington Post wrote about the Social Security Administration attempting to collect debts that were generations - quite literally - removed.
Am I My Father's Keeper?
For the first time in the history of the internet, that … [Read more...]

Ahh, another weekend in the Bay Area - this one with lots of open homes in my own neighborhood. Boring? I know - but, hey, spying on the improvements my neighbors make is fun.
Speaking of spying, let's talk informally for a bit about the NSA's recently revealed spying programs... and of a compliant press corps tripping over each other and … [Read more...]

It was less than a month ago when I weighed in on the need for privacy, in the wake of the IRS scandal. In light of the recent revelation of indiscriminate data collection by the NSA - on both foreigners and Americans - I'll be visiting the topic again. However, for a change of pace, here's a survey piece pulling in 6 different statistics on … [Read more...]

A few months back we wrote a post asking readers how much privacy they would sacrifice to save money, trying to get a feel for the value judgements of DQYDJ readers on the common tradeoff of privacy with security and convenience.
To me, the number of people who weren't very concerned with privacy was a bit of a surprise - and recent news events … [Read more...]

"First they came for the communists, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist.
Then they came for the socialists, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist.
Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak for … [Read more...]

A couple weeks back we put up a visualization of Federal Spending per State. It was good fun, but we did leave out one 'little' aspect of that whole spending thing - Defense Spending.
Cameron sort of explained the rationale in the comments - Defense spending is a collective good that would tend to have positive externalities (more-so than most … [Read more...]

Edit: Commenter Free By 50 has pointed out that guidance has been issued on employer paid contributions to an HSA or an HRA. You can find that calculator on the Center for Consumer Information & Insurance Oversight website. I was only able to open it in a recent version of Microsoft Office - YMMV.
I don't know who came up with the morbid … [Read more...]

I just wanted to share with you folks a quick hit from exiting Republican Senator Richard Lugar of Indiana, who was defeated in the Senate primary by Richard Mourdock. Mourdock lost in the general, after making controversial statements on rape. But he's not the story here.
Senator Lugar gave a speech at the moderate Ripon Society ripping what … [Read more...]